Hi there - I am Link from The DGL and I've been hardcore nerdin' on INS Source for 5 years now. Yeah I compete, nbd.

Anyways, I thought I'd get some good dialogue going here.

First off for the optimization stuff - I am getting around 80-160 FPS with the following specs:

GTX 980

i7 8700k

Borderless

All low settings

1980x1020

16 GB DDR4 2666

860 EVO SSD

Key Things I think need to be worked on

A lot of people will say optmization - which is entirely true. I think there was a huge performance increase from Beta #1 to Beta #2. I had the same specs in both betas and my FPS increased an average of 40 FPS which is huge. They did that in 3 weeks.

I want to focus on some more things relevant to the game mechanics itself.

Reduce sway by 50%. Currently if you run around for a little bit and then try to aim down sight, the game has inherent sway that is very hard to control. It's a game within a game and is very frustrating.

Make it take twice as long to stop and change direction (right now it's like 0 seconds). I think like 0.5s or 1s added time to being able to run full speed then changing direction immediately. This could also be done by changing the rate of acceleration which I bring up below. Example of the issue I am talking about - https://clips.twitch.tv/DifferentExcitedGoatWOOP

Improved servers - the hit registration is an issue even in coop.

Reduce the ttk by maybe 15-20% (make all guns more powerful?).

Reduce horizontal recoil

Increase the vertical recoil

In source if you get shot while running, it cuts your speed down to almost nothing, this should be added into sandstorm. I would say, if I was being conservative, make people slow down by 50% if they are hit. This will help with the TTK being higher than source and make it more realistic/fun.

Decrease the rate of acceleration. I don't mind the top speed, but the acceleration is a bit too fast. You can reach top speed almost instantly which makes room fighting insanely fast and a bit random.

Summary

Currently the issue of this game is speed. The movement is too fast. I'm not a slow player by any means but the speed can be abused.

I'm a competitive player, I play the game to it's limits. If something can be abused, I will abuse it. I play to win. I don't play to play fair.

Right now, it is much more advantageous to just start sprinting as soon as you get shot at if you don't know where you are being shot at from (obviously if you're behind cover that doesn't mean sprint out), I am speaking more of in a 1v1 situation or where you are trying to cap an objective and get swarmed. You can nearly dodge bullets. Also, because people don't get slowed down if they are running and hit, it's very hard to kill people rushing.

I find myself spraying and praying more than just aiming. In Source, the best feeling was one tapping kids across the map. When you got in close range combat, you didn't see people just zipping around corners almost impossible to hit. In sandstorm, it's completely viable to full sprint into rooms now and then change directions because it's hard to hit. Also AD-strafe dancing is a thing because of the fast movement.

I find this game is a lot more spray and pray now than aiming, especially in comp 5v5. I don't want to risk missing a shot so I just spray when I see a guy. And most comp players are AD-strafing while fighting so that makes it even more beneficial to spray to hit them in the head.

Conclusion

I think this game has huge potential. I think it has good competitive potential as well (I know firefight is foreign to a lot of people but it's an awesome thinking game). A few numbers tweaks and all the great mechanics of INS Source would be back again.

I know I am biased because I am close to the devs but I think it's close. It needs work, but it's close. I know a lot more than most and I think NWI is doing a great job considering everything. Is it as good as it could have been? No. But I think we've all had our fair share of not doing our best, myself included, haha - and it's for sure not the worst they could have done!

I am still not sure about the TTK in general, because of the hitreg issues. Maybe the overall ttk is fine if you had a reliable hitreg. Heavy Armor also seems to play into this. So I would first fix and change those things, before changing the overall TTK.

I am fine with the overall speed but I also have seen people knowingly an unknowingly abusing stuff related to the speed. Mainly things like dolphin diving and sliding. Sliding is not as worse as it was in the Alpha, but the weird third person animation combined with the speed makes this really weird when a enemy is doing this.

Auto fire seems way to good across pretty much all distances and ironically it seems that trying to tap shoot people in single fire can give you recoil that is harder to manage than just spray and pray.

Gotta hit the big 4k Link come on. You didnt however mention the current limitations of focusing which I think are equally as detrimental to gunplay right now as the overpowering weapon sway. The delay between stopping moving and being able to focus really hinders accuracy (especially when coupled with weapon sway) and when your stamina is low being completely unable to focus is a killer.

@MeFirst TTK is quite high which isnt helped by the sometimes jank hit reg, but having to pump 4-5 556 bullets into someone to get them to keel over doesnt really help. Currently I am totally eschewing any weapon that doesn't run 7.62 as the ttk on anything lower is just too inefficient. G3/FAL/SCAR/AKM are the way to go right now Ive found.

I think the top speed is okay but the acceleration rate needs to be toned down. You shouldn't be able to change directions so fast and maintain max speed. You also should take longer to get to top speed from a dead stand still.

This would help with close quarters battles. Right now they are a bit random and feel super arcadey. If you watch comp players fight inside a building they are dashing and jumping all over the place because the guy who is sitting still is usually at a disadvantage.

Good points overall, though I think that TTK should be lowered a lot more than you propose.

@link: Do you find hip-firing too easy? In the old Insurgency for me it almost was like "wow, I actually hit a no-scope shot", and now I feel like I could almost do 50% accuracy on short range hipfire shots. It is much easier to control now I find, and often enough I don't ADS at all anymore with semi auto weapons.

I'm a competitive player, I play the game to it's limits. If something can be abused, I will abuse it. I play to win. I don't play to play fair.
Right now, it is much more advantageous to just start sprinting as soon as you get shot at if you don't know where you are being shot at from (obviously if you're behind cover that doesn't mean sprint out), I am speaking more of in a 1v1 situation or where you are trying to cap an objective and get swarmed. You can nearly dodge bullets. Also, because people don't get slowed down if they are running and hit, it's very hard to kill people rushing.

One more question if I may: wouldn't a 1-hit-kill weapon balancing fix all of this? My reasoning is if you get shot at from you-don't-know-where, you should be dead already unless the other guy has poor aim. And if someone rushes I'd imagine a competitive pro like you should have no problem to land at least one hit first if you were covering the right angle, and if you weren't... then fair game if you die, right?
Interested to hear your thoughts on this, because I never played comp, and firefight only very rarely.

Another thing that I found somewhat annoying is the headbobbing while running/sprinting. It makes scanning the environment annoying sometimes but it is not such a big of an issue.

Such high weapon sway after sprinting is quite punishing given that the majority of comp players are either sprinting or crouch-moving while ADSing. Any time you need to move quickly and hold another angle you have to deal with the high sway and this becomes more apparent in Sandstorn where the maps are larger. Combined with the high TTK and the movement speed, it becomes a problem.

In a scenario where I get a callout and sprint to a new position to hold a defensive angle before the enemy arrives, I am not rewarded as I have to deal with the high sway against an enemy who moves with "supersonic" speed and needs 3-5 hits to get downed, while moving with the same speed even when he gets shot. This makes semi auto not viable at all.

Sway and movement speed would probably be not that frustrating if the TTK was as low as in Source. From another perspective, higher TTK would be OK with slower speed and reduced sway. Make your pick
Nonetheless, the movement speed feels better than the sluggish feeling it had way back in alpha testing.

Regarding the armor, do we really need both light and heavy? Why not just have heavy armor which increases the TTK but lowers movement speed and/or increases ADS time and get done with it?

Important to mention that I have not played the latest beta as my pc is dead so this is more like generic thoughts and not based on the latest build.

Edit: voice lines are way too spammy. This is going to be a problem in competitive especially in 1v1 2v1 situations.

Do you find hip-firing too easy? In the old Insurgency for me it almost was like "wow, I actually hit a no-scope shot", and now I feel like I could almost do 50% accuracy on short range hipfire shots. It is much easier to control now I find, and often enough I don't ADS at all anymore with semi auto weapons.

I found hipfiring way too easy in Beta1, I think it has gotten a lot harder in Beta2 but it still is too easy. Whatever they did from Beta1 to Beta2, they should do it again once more and it'll probably be in the right spot.

One more question if I may: wouldn't a 1-hit-kill weapon balancing fix all of this? My reasoning is if you get shot at from you-don't-know-where, you should be dead already unless the other guy has poor aim. And if someone rushes I'd imagine a competitive pro like you should have no problem to land at least one hit first if you were covering the right angle, and if you weren't... then fair game if you die, right?
Interested to hear your thoughts on this, because I never played comp, and firefight only very rarely.

I think that if you make every gun 1-hit-kill then the game becomes a little too easy in the opposite direction.

Right now, I spray to pray because player movement is insane. If it's 1-hit-kill then I spray because I don't need to aim to kill and that would be too much like COD4 Hardcore where you just sprayed wildly for a free kill. It's a balancing act. INS2 had a really good balance - insanely good balance. The gun mechanics were awesome. I think with the power of the unreal engine the mechanics could be even better.

I also don't mind that armor increases TTK, it just needs to be balanced. If the foregrip gave you crazy good recoil control and armor increased your TTK by 2-5 bullets but you had to choose between the two that's a good trade off. You also then have to factor in movement speed as well. It's a balancing act.

I fully agree, which makes me think "why mess with that?". This stuff is so hard to get right for the reasons you mention, I mostly don't see the need to change any of it - with a few exceptions where one gun e.g. was just clearly better than another of the same cost. E.g. I never could get remotly the same killing efficiency out of an m1911 as out of an m9, and they have improved that balance in Sandstorm.

I found hipfiring way too easy in Beta1, I think it has gotten a lot harder in Beta2 but it still is too easy. Whatever they did from Beta1 to Beta2, they should do it again once more and it'll probably be in the right spot.

I didn't play beta 1, but I agree making it a little harder would probably be a good thing.

If it's 1-hit-kill then I spray because I don't need to aim to kill and that would be too much like COD4 Hardcore where you just sprayed wildly for a free kill. It's a balancing act.

I didn't play COD4 hc, but in 5 and some of the later CODs that I tried HC in, this was indeed an issue. But with high caliber, high recoil weapons like the FAL or EBR I would very much like to see the one hit kills of INS2 come back. Imho this just makes for more satisfying gameplay on the playing-for-fun side of things and the competitive requirements should be addressed by counterbalancing such weapons with recoil, rate of fire, and price. After all the playerbase of the more casual modes seems to vastly outweigh the competitive scene in terms of numbers.

INS2 hit the perfect sweetspot for me in many regards and Sandstorm just doesn't at the moment :-/.

@Link - I think if these changes are going to be made then supply points will have to be cut at the start of the game + drum magazines removed for most classes. It would be chaos to have these sort of improvements stacked on top of everyone having a 50 round drum + foregrip at the beginning.

It just goes to show that you can't change the TTK without changing everything else, meaning changing the design approach towards Sandstorm.

Hey @Link ! Great post here !
I find the way you explain your point of view really interesting ! Thanks you, it made me think about things I wasn't really aware of.
Here is my suggestions and problems that I've been going throught since I started playing Insurgency: Sandstorm.

First of all, problems that I think really important before getting into the gameplay.

Many people get stuck on spectator mod and can't play the whole game in PVPs games. I've seen a lot of posts around here talking about it and I am pretty sure that devs will fix it really soon.

There is something about smokes that I'm sure that other people got while going through it or near it : your screen starts to flash really fast in an epileptic way, between white (normal luminosity) and grey~less brightness and it kinda hurts the eyes. It is a visual effect that could be dangerous for people with epileptic problems.

I also had a huge issue where my game could not run at all unless because of an untrusted file on System32, and if it happens to some other people it will be a big disappoint for people unless they know how to fix it. I posted my problem and how to fix it here.

Optimization ! But as you said, devs are already fixing it.

And then potential changes:

The Restricted Area needs to appear clearly on the Tactical Map ! Many times you just try to flank a little corner, a tin wall and then you get into Restricted Area without knowing it until you start walking throught. Since flank is an important aspect of strategies on such games, everyone should be aware of these limits before doing the move.
Same as the Restricted Aera, spawn should be noticeable on the Tactical Map; but it's less important.

As soon as you aim, your vision get fuzzy outside of your sight. Obviously it's here to retranscribe the fact that if you look something then everything around is kinda fuzzy for your eyes. It is a good idea, but sadly it bridles the gameplay in a more pratical and competitive way. Especially on such wide maps. If people aim somewhere, they're already watching near their sight, we should not add extra blur aspect around it.

I might have not played enough the game (tried only few games on Competitive mod), but I found foot-steps too low in terms of sound. I am pretty sure that it's because I was chilling and discovering the game on casuals mods like Coops or PVPs Unranked. But since I'm not sure, I'd rather post it anyway !

I find really interesting the fact that your character coughs around smokes and delivers his position that way ! But why does the Gas Mask cost 0 point then if it's that helpful ?

EDIT. Sometimes we can get on free camera spectator mod when you die on Competitive mod; this needs to get fix ! People should not be able to watch the enemy team in such a mod !

I definitely agree on the TTK. There should never be a situation where someone requires two hits with the bolt actions. Ever. That's the trade-off between the bolts and semis. She SVD and EBR usually 1 shot, the bolts should always 1 shot.

Right now the time to kill feels like it is in a weird bastardized hybrid spot and needs to go one way or the other.